Bowling Green darn good; Jayhawks aren’t

Four large orange mobile circulating fans were wheeled off Bowling Green’s sideline about halfway through the third quarter.

They weren’t the first fans to leave Memorial Stadium on Saturday night.

Kansas University football fans began fleeing the stadium for much happier locations after a front blew in about the same time Falcons blew the Jayhawks out.

Whether it was the weather or the Jayhawks’ mystifying run of mistakes or both was moot, although both the climate and KU’s football team clearly went south in synch.

Ergo, the fourth quarter was played in front of a crowd about the size of last year’s season finale against Wyoming, and more people live in the Baker Wetlands than saw the 2001 season finale.

So far this season, the Jayhawks have proved they can beat an NCAA Div. I-AA school (Southwest Missouri State), and that they can’t beat a strong I-A team (Iowa State), a semi-good I-A school (Nevada-Las Vegas) and a quality I-A mid-major (Bowling Green).

Anyone who sees the final score of this one in, say, Ypsilanti, Mich., or Show Low, Ariz., or Bismarck, N.D., would never believe Bowling Green looked like a soggy bowling glove in the first quarter.

Hard to believe the Falcons gained a mere 15 yards and produced just one first down in the first 15 minutes. They did, and the Jayhawks made them, uh, well Kansas didn’t score a point in that quarter, either.

Although the Jayhawks’ offense has been mostly puny so far, at least the Jayhawks had been relatively fumble-free just three balls on the ground and only one lost in the first three games.

So much for that gold star. The Jayhawks coughed it up three times Saturday night and momentum changed each time.

First-year coach Mark Mangino likes to talk about his team sawing wood taking care of business, so to speak but you can’t make much sawdust when your saw keeps snapping.

Quarterback Bill Whittemore, so impressive against the I-AA Bears, was the primary saw-snapper by fumbling twice, once in the worst place of all the Jayhawks’ end zone.

Then there was Greg Heaggans. Last week the red-shirt freshman broke John Hadl’s ancient school record for kickoff-return yardage. This week Heaggans muffed one of Bowling Green’s pop-up kickoffs and that led to still another score.

On the positive side and the Jayhawks were grasping for positive straws Whittemore didn’t throw any interceptions, and Heaggans didn’t botch any more kickoff returns.

Rarely does a Mid-America Conference school dent the AP Top 25 rankings, but after dropping 51 points on Missouri and stinging Kansas for 39 on successive weekends you have to wonder what team wouldn’t be ranked if it scored 90 points in back-to-back weeks against schools from one of the country’s major conferences.

If Saturday night proved anything, it’s that both teams rose to the level of their competence. Bowling Green is darned good and Kansas is, darn it, not so good.

In fact, the only unanswered question as far as I’m concerned is: Why does a team with green in its name have orange as its dominant color?